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Generational Conflict

Do you have a hard time with older or younger co-workers? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast Dear HBR:, co-hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Jennifer Deal, an expert on generational issues at the Center for Creative Leadership and the co-author of What Millennials Want from Work. They talk through what to do when you’re struggling with an older colleague, when you’re managing a much older worker, and how to motivate younger employees who seem lax on the job.

Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Send in your questions about workplace dilemmas by emailing Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:

HBR: What Facebook Knows About Engaging Millennial Employeesby Lori Goler — “Millennials want to do meaningful work and be a part of something that will have a positive impact on the world. Some might characterize this attitude as demanding and self-centered — asking for too much from a job. But our data indicates that at Facebook — and probably many other organizations — people of all generations have begun to redefine fulfillment in this way.”

HBR: What Younger Workers Can Learn from Older Workers, and Vice Versa by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott — “As life and working life expands, everyone will go through more changes and transitions. Having the skills and transformational assets to support this change tends to be something that is strongest in the young. However, as people live longer, they need to display this skill throughout their lives. Juvenescence, the art of aging young, is important, and this naturally opens up an avenue for inverse mentoring of the young by the old.”

HBR: The Four Biggest Reasons for Generational Conflict in Teams by Tammy Erickson — “The crux of most technology-based team misunderstandings is not the technology per se – it is how team members interpret each others’ intentions based on communication approaches. Younger members are accustomed to rapid responses from peers; they are likely to feel frustrated and, at times, rejected if they don’t hear from older colleagues for a day or so. Team members from older generations may not only be uncomfortable with digital communication, they may even feel offended by a lack of face-to-face or at least voice-to-voice interaction, or left out of the loop.”

Book: What Millennials Want from Workby Jennifer Deal and Alec Levenson — “Our research revealed that, fundamentally, Millennials want what older generations have always wanted: an interesting job that pays well, where they work with people they like and trust, have access to development and the opportunity to advance, are shown appreciation on a regular basis, and don’t have to leave.”

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. The truth is that we don’t have to let the tension, conflicts and misunderstandings get us down. We can do something about them.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions about workplace dilemmas and with the help of experts and insights from academic research, we help you move forward. Today we’re answering your questions about generational conflict. And here to help us is Jennifer Deal. She’s a researcher at the Center for Creative Leadership. She also co-wrote the book, What Millennials Want from Work. Jennifer, thanks so much for coming in.

JENNIFER DEAL: Thanks for having me.

ALISON BEARD: So, Jennifer we’re two Gen Xers in the room. What generation to you identify with?

JENNIFER DEAL: I’m a Gen Xer as well.

ALISON BEARD: OK. So, we’re all Gen Xers, maybe it sounds like it wouldn’t make for a great diversity of opinion on this show, but we are in a unique position because we remember what it was like to be young and we also know what it feels like to be old.

ALISON BEARD: I feel old a lot of the time. So, are generations different around the world?Are these sort of Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennial that we talk about so often in the U.S., does that vary depending on the country you’re in?

JENNIFER DEAL: It does. There are differences based on country culture and big events that have happened in the country. But when we’re talking about Millennials, people in different parts of the world have some general agreement on what those birth years are, and they run from about 1980 to about 1995.

ALISON BEARD: And no matter what people around the world call these different generations, is there conflict everywhere in your experience?

JENNIFER DEAL: Yes. Young people are difficult everywhere and older people find them annoying.

ALISON BEARD: So, let’s get going. Dear HBR: I’m a Millennial, aged 27 and I just started a new job at a U.S. staffing agency. My boss hired me because of my eagerness to innovate ideas. Although I have no experience, he sees great potential in me. I swear I’m not bragging, just setting the scene. I work with three senior members, but sometimes we just don’t connect. I’m very computer savvy and creative. They are all in their late 50’s or older and are old fashion in their way of doing things. I get pushback from them even though my boss is asking for doing things a new way. For example, I now review resumes before they can place candidates. One of the senior members asked that I print out resumes. I said that’s an unnecessary extra step since I’m already saving candidates resumes to both our shared drive as well as to our internal system. A debate ensued until my boss said we should table the discussion. Later, I saw the co-worker talking to my boss about me. Keep in mind my boss is also a Millennial. He told me that there’s no need to apologize because he hired me for my innovation and willingness to stick up for myself, not for catering to outdated ways of doing things. I’m relieved my boss still thinks I’m doing good work, but I don’t want to alienate myself from my co-workers. I share desk space with them and I have dealt with differences between myself and older generations before. I don’t want to put a target on my back again. How can I get my colleagues to see I’m just doing what my boss tells me without sounding pretentious or inconsiderate?Should I just ignore them as long as my boss likes me?

JENNIFER DEAL: Well, I feel for the Millennial because it’s hard to be in a situation where you’re really trying to do what you think is best and you get pushback. On the other hand, when I read this, one of the things I wonder is why is it a problem to print out the resumes?

ALISON BEARD: Oh, my gosh, that was absolutely my first reaction. Just print the resumes. Because it’s not that hard to print out resumes if your colleague asks you to.

DAN MCGINN: And I think it’s especially true when you’re 27 and the new kid in the office. She’s in a service job and these older workers are in many ways her clients and she needs to deliver what they need in the form they need it.

ALISON BEARD: It’s not like they’re asking her to fax something to them. [LAUGHTER]

DAN MCGINN: Jennifer, in your experience is technology one of those dimensions in which these generational conflicts often pop up?

JENNIFER DEAL: Yes, it is. And what I’ve actually noticed is in these kinds of conflicts, part of what’s going on is sort of a battle about clout. Who has it and who wants it?And younger people when they come into the workforce, when they don’t have a lot of experience they use what they have to gain clout with the people they’re working with. And what they have are innovative ideas, new ways of doing things, tech savvy with the newest technology, so they use those things to increase their clout. Older people tend to use the things they have which is greater experience, longevity in the workplace. And experience specifically with how things have been done and actually gotten things done. And so, what I see in this is a conflict that’s sort of on that level. The Millennial has the thing she’s bringing to the workplace and really wants them to be valued for that. The older people have things they want to be valued for and they know how they’ve gotten the work done and how they can do it efficiently. So, to me that’s part of the pull that I see going on here.

ALISON BEARD: It’s interesting with this listener though because she’s the one feeling outnumbered, right?So, it’s her and her boss as this younger generation who’s trying to change things and then this group of older people who are trying to keep them down basically. And I get that probably some of the changes that she wants to enact are good ones, but she’s really going about it in the wrong way.

JENNIFER DEAL: What I generally tell people is you really need to think about what the people who you’re interacting with need because that really should be the priority and not necessarily always doing it the way that’s easiest for you because oftentimes people don’t recognize that doing things with a certain technology isn’t as easy for the other people as it is for them. Once they understand that it’s difficult for them, hopefully for the people they’re working with, hopefully they can take a different approach.

DAN MCGINN: People who look at resumes are going to want them printed out period. Full stop.

ALISON BEARD: Just because you’re an old fogy Gen X who’s always looked at things on paper and I’m the same way, so I’m not making fun of you, probably our younger colleagues wouldn’t feel that way and they’d be happy to take a look at the resume on their laptop or their smart phone or their tablet.

DAN MCGINN: I bet that none of us will ever go into a job interview where the person across the table is not holding a copy of our resume, on paper.

ALISON BEARD: Oh, that’s quite a bet. [LAUGHTER]

DAN MCGINN: Right. Aside from the recommendation to print out the resumes, what would you have this person do to think about this relationship more positively?

JENNIFER DEAL: I would actually have them printed out and take it to the people one at a time and sort of say, sorry. I thought that having it on the internal drive, with the shared drive would be good enough. Here are the printouts. Even, help me understand how you do your work so that I can help you be more efficient at it. If that’s part of the Millennials job. Because understanding how they do their work will give the Millennial a better idea about how she could possibly shift them toward more efficiencies if that’s what her boss is really looking for. But until she understands how their work is actually being done, it’s difficult to do that in a way that doesn’t just get them to say, why would I do that?

DAN MCGINN: That makes sense to me based partly on research that I’ve read. One of the ways to combat ageism is to have younger people get a really good look at the competencies that an older person has. One of the ageist perceptions is that an older person is less competent. So, if you can create opportunities for the young person to see the expert, older person really succeeding at what they do, so if in this process the 27-year-old recognizes wow, that 57-year-old, they’re really good at reading a resume.

ALISON BEARD: And acknowledges it. One issue here is I do think that she’s already set herself back a little bit by not printing out these resumes when there was a confrontation about it and then continuing to engage in the debate. One of her colleagues is complaining about her to her boss. Maybe the colleague sees her later talking to her boss and perceives it as complaining about them. So, I do think she’s in a tough position now such that when she comes over to try to help, it’s not going to be welcomed because she’s in a way already created enemies. And I do think that she’s been put in a really difficult position. Because it seems like her boss is assigning her to be a change agent when he hasn’t brought the team together and talked about where he wants to go and what changes he wants to see. And so, it’s going to be very difficult for that young woman without that mandate from above to affect any change. You know, she doesn’t have a ton of influence right now.

JENNIFER DEAL: If she’s really given the mandate to shift people to other ways of doing things, she needs to understand that they are doing their work in the way they believe is the most efficient and effective for them. So, if she spends some time understanding how they do their work, why they believe this is the most efficient and effective way for them to do their work, she can then sort of get inside their minds and figure out what, and what she’s supposed to be implementing might actually make their life easier. Because if you know how to do something really efficiently one way, why would you switch to another way that takes you longer, is more laborious and more annoying?You wouldn’t.

ALISON BEARD: Right. And that’s true of any generation, right Jennifer?

JENNIFER DEAL: Exactly. It’s true of everybody. So, if you figure out a way that does those things better and more easily, even if there’s a small ramp up period, and you can demonstrate that, people will happily move over to that new way of doing it because it will make their work better. To me, part of what she hasn’t demonstrated to them is why what she’s trying to do makes their work easier.

ALISON BEARD: Absolutely.

DAN MCGINN: I had a situation at a former job where I was editing a writer who continued to write his column on a typewriter. He refused to use a computer to write. He’d been doing it that way for a long time. That’s how his brain worked, it worked that way. And for a long time, the magazine accommodated him. He was allowed to fax his column in and somebody would have to retype it into the computer. And I think in that instance you do need to recognize that if somebody learned to do something with an older technology, it’s not just a personal preference, it’s the way their brain works after a certain point. If you’re an architect that learned to sketch on paper, moving to a computer system is probably very difficult for you. So, I think we need to be a little bit empathetic about the way that a process isn’t just a process, but it actually becomes cognitive in the way that your brain works when you’re doing that.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yeah. One of my initial takes on this is that she’s worrying a lot about herself, but she’s not demonstrating any care for where her colleagues are coming from and I think that’s something that she should work on.

DAN MCGINN: It’s also very foreboding that someday we’re going to be in that situation and that’s one of the things that the research on ageism always highlights is that gender conflicts, most people are going to be the same gender their whole life and racial conflicts, you’re not going to change race or ethnicity over the course of your life, but everybody gets older. So, the people who are doing the discriminating when they’re in their 20’s are going to face that discrimination when they’re in their 50’s and 60’s. And that’s a dynamic that you don’t see in other areas.

ALISON BEARD: So, it sounds like we’re telling this Millennial, definitely print out the resumes and the next time you’re asked to do something that’s a small accommodation that’s not really going to hurt your productivity, go ahead and do it and then find a way to show your colleagues that you value them and what they bring to the table. And once you do that they might start valuing what you bring to the table too.

DAN MCGINN: OK, here’s our next listener question. Dear HBR: I’m a 39-year-old and I work in the United Kingdom. One of my colleagues who’s about 60 years old has started reporting to me. I know that age is just a number, but I believe his age has cemented his behavior. He’s very stubborn. He’s unable to let go of what he starts even when it does not justify his time, his expertise, or his compensation. For example, he wanted to work on a contract himself and did not want to hand it over to the legal team. He says they make a lot of mistakes. I said it would be easier to review their work than doing everything from scratch. He’s wasted months on this. In every review meeting of ours he cites too might workload as a reason not to take up new tasks including ones that are directly related to revenue. I’ve done some of the usual management stuff already. I’ve offered to help prioritize, pick up some of his workload. I’ve asked him to block off time to finish these pending tasks. He’s not taken up any of this. He’ll send a three page email defending why he could not do what he was supposed to do. I almost feel like leaving him be. Once he told me he was very ambitious when he was younger. And if not for bad luck when he was my age, he would have been a very successful entrepreneur. I feel like he’s still regretting the missed opportunities of his youth. He keeps comparing himself with the current owners and says if he was running the company he would do things differently. He feels he’s a visionary, an innovator, a star performer and a great people manager. He’s not. The reason I feel so much pain is because I genuinely want to help him. He’s just struggling. He does not realize that other brighter and younger managers, including myself, are doing much better than him. Where do I start?Jennifer, this sounds like a tough one.

JENNIFER DEAL: It does. It definitely does. I feel for the 39-year-old and I feel for this 60-year-old he’s working with. This is a difficult situation.

ALISON BEARD: To me though it doesn’t seem like a generational issue per se. He’s definitely attributing this man’s unwillingness to change to his age, but it sounds like he’s just dealing with a really, really poor performer and maybe feeling bad about it because it is a more senior person who probably won’t be able to get a job elsewhere.

JENNIFER DEAL: That’s how I read it as well. I think that you’re absolutely right. The 39-year-old is feeling bad because a 60-year-old isn’t performing well and in society, as much as everybody talks about how the world, especially the U.S. is so youth focused, in truth, we’re all brought up in societies where we’re supposed to respect those who are older than we are. We are supposed to respect and defer to them and it’s very difficult when you’re a younger person who has older people reporting to them and it’s especially difficult when the older people aren’t performing well. Because then you have to do something about it and that’s contrary to how most people are brought up.

DAN MCGINN: Does this happen a lot that person A is underperforming and it may or may not have anything to do with the person’s age, but people believe that the age is the culprit here?

JENNIFER DEAL: All the time. It happens all the time. This younger person isn’t performing well because they’re a Millennial. This older person isn’t performing well because they’re older and they’re stuck in their ways and they don’t want to change. Absolutely it’s a common attribution. And it generally isn’t an accurate one. There are more differences within a generation than there are between generations. And people, some people perform well in a generation and some people don’t. Attributing it to generation is easy because you can see what age people are. But it isn’t generally, the best answer.

ALISON BEARD: So, there’s really no truth to the idea that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and if you’ve done something for a very long time the way you are, you’re really not going to change.

JENNIFER DEAL: I would argue that if the incentives are good enough, old dogs learn new tricks. If there’s no incentive to learn a new trick, why would you bother?

ALISON BEARD: But don’t you think that this manager is giving this employee incentives. It seems like he’s doing all the right things in terms of making recommendations, about how he can be more efficient, sort of really caring about him as a person. What’s the next step that he needs to take?

JENNIFER DEAL: Well I agree with you. He has done all of that. What isn’t clear in this is what the 60-year-old goal is. Why is the 60-year-old doing what the 60-year-old is doing?Is this about performing well or is this about showing himself to be right?What do you actually want?To me, that’s the question the manager should be asking the 60-year-old.

ALISON BEARD: Just a heart to heart.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yeah. What do you want?You say you want these things or you’re doing all this work. What do you actually want because the work you’re doing now isn’t going to get you that?And if that is really want you want, let’s sit down and figure out how you can achieve that. Because if you don’t know what the goal is, you don’t know how to get there and if you’re not told that the path you’re on isn’t going to get you to your goal, you just keep chugging along.

ALISON BEARD: Right. This 39-year-old manager seems almost afraid to have a frank conversation with the 60-year-old and say, you might think that you’re being more innovative, but you’re not. You might think that you’re a visionary, but you’re not. You might think you’re managing people, but you’re not. I would be naturally hesitant to say that to someone who was 20 years my senior also. So, how does he go into the conversation as someone who’s younger and do that in an effective and empathetic way?

JENNIFER DEAL: I wouldn’t actually have that conversation because that is the guy’s self-concept. That’s his identity. And threatening identities is generally not very effective. Let’s not talk about how bad you are in all these things, in my opinion. Let’s talk about what you, where you actually want to go and what you want to do. And then let’s shift you in that direction. And if what they guy says is he wants to keep doing exactly what he’s doing, then you have a conversation about the discrepancy between the guy’s performing and the way you need him to perform. And then you move to a performance plan.

DAN MCGINN: Jennifer when I read this letter I was reminded of what Jack Welsh used to say about the need for candor and honesty when talking about performance. One of the things he would say is that one of the reasons you need to be brutally honest with people in their 30’s or their 40’s if they’re not performing is if you just kick the can down the road they’re going to get to be 55 or 60. They’re still going to be underperforming and at that point they’re not going to have a lot of other options. They’re going to have a big mortgage, their kids might be in college that if you need to move somebody out of a job you’re better off doing it earlier in their career because the later they get in their career, the harder it becomes the fewer options they have. This seems like a situation where that’s at the top of the 39-year-old’s mind. That this is an older guy. He might not have some opportunities. Do performance conversations become harder when a person is older like that?

JENNIFER DEAL: I imagine they do. Because you’re really thinking about what can you actually do with this person and how the conversation is going to affect their life. Not that it doesn’t affect younger people’s lives, but it affects them differently. And I really agree with the advice that younger people should go out and seek as much feedback as they can, as early as possible because it’s much easier to change your trajectory just a couple of degrees in one direction when you’re young, to have a big impact later on. As opposed to if this 60-year-old shifts his trajectory by two or three percent, how much of an effect is it going to have before he retires?

ALISON BEARD: Can I just play devil’s advocate here?If this manager has already invested the time and already tried to bring this guy up to standards, why wouldn’t he put him on a performance improvement plan and get rid of him?And he really should be focusing on the younger up and coming, brighter managers that he talks about.

JENNIFER DEAL: Well, I’d say that he should actually be focusing on everybody on his team regardless of age. My question for the 39-year-old is how would you talk to the person if the person were 40?

ALISON BEARD: Or, a 25-year-old.

JENNIFER DEAL: Precisely.

ALISON BEARD: Right. I actually looked at some research on older workers and sort of perceptions versus reality and again and again, in a book that Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott have written called The Hundred Year Life, they note that the older workers are surprisingly willing to invest in new skills. There are some other research showing that older workers are less resistant to change than we assume. I actually think about my mom. She was an HR executive her entire life. She worked in banking and healthcare and television and age 60 she applied to work for a government intelligence agency. My dad and I sort of said, mom, mom, not really sure that they’re going to pick you for this job being aegis ourselves and they did take her. And she worked there for six years and she had an incredibly fulfilling time there. And I do think more people are more like her.

JENNIFER DEAL: I completely agree with you. I think you’re absolutely right. To me one of the sad things I see is people who are older are getting passed over for jobs. Because if people don’t expect to stay at a job forever anyway, why does it matter if the person’s only going to stay six to 10 years?

ALISON BEARD: Right. And actually, at age 60 we’re living much longer which means we’re going to work much longer. There are people working into their 80’s now.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yes. Absolutely. And think about when you hire someone with that kind of experience behind them, think about how much more they bring to the workplace. They don’t have necessarily the content knowledge of the new place they’re moving to, but think about how much other experience and knowledge they have that they can leverage in the workplace.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: Earlier I said I think performance problems in a 60-year-old is hard because they don’t have many outside options. They probably can’t get another job. The flip side of that I guess is you could give them an early retirement package that’s very generous that incentivizes and makes it somewhat painless for them to move on.

ALISON BEARD: And it could be the best thing that’s ever happened to this guy who seems pretty unhappy in his job.

JENNIFER DEAL: Absolutely. Think about it. If there are other things he wants to do, if that type of situation were setup, he could go do the things he wants to do and be more as he believes himself to be.

ALISON BEARD: Start that business that he always wanted to.

JENNIFER DEAL: Exactly.

DAN MCGINN: So, it sounds like our advice to this listener is don’t focus on the age of the 60-year-old worker, focus on his lack of performance. Start a conversation about what his goals are and why he’s continuing to behave in this way even though you’ve already made it clear that this is not working. Over time, there’s a question whether his performance is going to improve. You might end up putting him on a performance improvement program. He may or may not get up over that bar. If he doesn’t it may be time to think about an early retirement program of some sort and whether there’s a way that you can do that in a way that’s a win for him and a win for you. He gets out of this job and maybe has a chance to do something entrepreneurial at the end of his career. You get a chance to bring a higher performing person for this important role.

JENNIFER DEAL: Terrific. Good advice.

ALISON BEARD: All right, let’s move onto the next question. Dear HBR: I work in India with a family business. For my generation the office is a very important part of life and we stay late to get things done. But the employees in their 20’s don’t care about time or punctuality. It’s hurting their co-workers and the bottom line. For example, a 25-year-old member of the family serves in a junior role. Recently a team was flying to see a customer. She overslept and missed the flight and arrived at the customer’s office two hours late. She treated it like it was no big deal. She argued she’s in a junior role and the customer wouldn’t be bothered. But she missed the point. Her team noticed. Flying together was important for bonding and preparing for the meeting. There are other employees in their 20’s who have no sense of urgency. If senior people ask these younger workers to do something on a Friday afternoon, they often put it off until Monday morning even if someone might be waiting for the data over the weekend. Their supervisors have tried talking to them, but so far it hasn’t helped. I understand that the younger generation values work life balance, but it doesn’t seem healthy to me. They stay out very late most nights. They drink too much. They indulge in social media day in and day out. When they show up for work they’re often half asleep. What can we say to make them understand the importance of meeting deadlines, showing up ready to perform and doing things now?

DAN MCGINN: Jennifer, what do you make of the situation?

JENNIFER DEAL: To me there are actually multiple situations here. So, let’s start with the first one. The 25-year-old member of the family that owns the company that didn’t show up. To me that’s actually a function of her membership in the family and that’s a family issue to deal with independent of her age or generation. That’s one particular issue. The young people, saying that they have no sense of urgency is a different issue.

ALISON BEARD: And a gross generalization, right?

JENNIFER DEAL: It’s a gross generalization and when I read this, what I start thinking is, did the senior people say we need something before you leave or did they say, get it to me as soon as you can?Because those are very different requests.

ALISON BEARD: If I hear get it done as soon as you can, I definitely do not think I should go have a fun weekend and then get it to the person on Monday.

DAN MCGINN: Maybe they did do it, but they just uploaded it to the Cloud and they didn’t print it so no one older knows that they did it. [LAUGHTER]

JENNIFER DEAL: Well, to me it really depends on the culture of the company. So, until people understand that that’s what is meant, I don’t think it’s reasonable for the manager to assume that when they say get it done as soon as possible it means don’t do anything else including have a life until you get it back to me. That to me is something, if it happens once, you have a conversation. You’re explicit about what it means when I say, I need this as soon as possible. This is what it means. The second time the people don’t do that, then it’s a different conversation.

ALISON BEARD: So, I think you then sort of answered the two specific questions he had, but he’s talking about some broader general issues that to me seem just baseline competence for employees. The importance of meeting deadlines, showing up ready to perform and doing things now. That seems like a big problem and not a communication issue necessarily because I think you wouldn’t have to tell someone, hey we really need to meet deadlines and you need to not be asleep at your desk. That seems totally basic to me.

JENNIFER DEAL: It is basic, but I’ve actually heard of managers who have had to have those conversations.

ALISON BEARD: That’s crazy.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yes, it is. The thing is once you’ve had those conversations, they’re done. And if people aren’t performing, they’re not performing.

ALISON BEARD: So, we have talked about the fact that oh, a lot of generational conflict isn’t really generational conflict, its life stage conflict or younger, older conflict. Did generations in different countries around the world who weren’t Millennials, did Baby Boomers when they were young, did Gen X when they were young?Did they ever come to work and fall asleep at their desks?

JENNIFER DEAL: It was something people did, yes.

ALISON BEARD: Really?

JENNIFER DEAL: Sure, and they got fired. The description of Baby Boomers from the late 1960’s, slackers who don’t think they have to show up on time, who come in when they want to, who want the corner office by Thursday. Sure. There are always people within every generation.

ALISON BEARD: Wow, what did they say about us?

JENNIFER DEAL: Oh, the same things. I promise.

DAN MCGINN: It’s interesting that we’re approaching this in kind of a judgy way that these people are not performing, that’s a problem and I’m not saying that’s an invalid way to look at it, but I’m struck by the fact that we’ve actually run pieces at HBR that take the opposite tact. Say a consulting firm that needs to hire lots of Millennials, therefore we’re going to let them go out to yoga at 2:00 in the afternoon, even though that’s not the usual lunch hour.

JENNIFER DEAL: I would actually argue that those are everyone, friendly companies. Because people at all stages of life want that kind of flexibility.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, so Facebook has done some really interesting research on that idea. They found absolutely no differences across age, geography or function. If you enact workplace friendly policies that make your Millennials happy, you’re going to make everyone happy.

JENNIFER DEAL: But if you aren’t performing, your manager is going to look more negatively on you leaving at 2:00 for yoga than if you’re a really high performer who the manager knows is going to come back and get your work done.

ALISON BEARD: Isn’t that something that these companies should address as early as the hiring process? You’re not going to fall asleep at your desk, you believe in meeting deadlines.

JENNIFER DEAL: You probably could, but to me it’s better addressed by the manager once the person is in the role. Often, you don’t’ really know how a person’s going to perform until they get there.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

JENNIFER DEAL: When people move from one organization to another, whatever the previous organization was. For younger people it’s often University. When they move from one organization to another they have to learn how things work in the new organization because organizations have cultures. So, helping them understand how to work and be successful in the particular organization they are now in is one of the things managers can do to help younger people coming in from other organizations or from university to be successful. Because often people just don’t know what those things are.

DAN MCGINN: Jennifer, how much of this is driven by the labor market and the fact that companies need these Millennials and need to take steps to want them to work there?

JENNIFER DEAL: A lot of it’s driven by the labor market. So, what you see is that what people can ask for and what companies will give them is largely a function of what the economy is like and what the labor market is in the particular place.

In certain sectors and in certain classifications of jobs, people can leave every six months and double their salary. So, there’s a lot of competition for these people and you don’t want to come down too hard on them if you have to keep them.

On the other hand, if they’re not doing the work, it might be better if you did. Because then you might be able to get somebody in who can actually do the work. It becomes a conundrum for the organization because they want the people to do the work, but they have trouble finding people because of the economy and because of the type of people they’re looking for, for the job.

DAN MCGINN: The other issue that struck me on this is that it’s a family business and that has ramifications in terms of succession and advancement. If you’re not a family member and it’s a family company, that can create a ceiling in terms of your potential there and I wonder whether some of these 20 somethings are not really invested in their futures at this company because they say, hey, I’m not a family member. I’m probably not going to get where I want to be here so this becomes more of a short-term opportunity.

ALISON BEARD: So, either they’re slacking off because they’re a family member or they’re slacking off because they’re not a family member.

DAN MCGINN: Exactly.

JENNIFER DEAL: I do think that family businesses have totally different dynamics.

DAN MCGINN: Well, but it’s not actually, so it’s not just a family business issue. If you look at research on why there’s negative perceptions about older people, one of the reasons is what they call succession issues which is basically, even if you’re a nonfamily business, but there are older people in the good jobs and they’re not leaving, that can create resentment in the younger people. So, anytime you sort of have that dynamic it can create tension over age.

ALISON BEARD: So, what are we advising our letter writer to do?

DAN MCGINN: Well, I think you already fired a couple of these people, didn’t you?[LAUGHTER]

ALISON BEARD: Definitely that girl that missed her flight.

JENNIFER DEAL: Well, don’t you have to talk to the family about the family member who missed the flight?I mean isn’t that the family’s job to manage her and I imagine there would be discussions about is this acceptable behavior?Is she letting down the family if she behaves this way?

ALISON BEARD: But my recommendation would definitely be to fire her.

DAN MCGINN: I would look more broadly at how managers are communicating expectations across the company. This is, this needs to be a higher performing culture where things are done now and where there’s more of a sense of urgency and that’s partly a failure of expectation, communicating expectation well. So, I don’t think the onus is all on these hung over 20 somethings. I think it’s partly on the managers who have been turning a blind eye or not demanding enough performance from them.

ALISON BEARD: I’m not hiring for it.

DAN MCGINN: Right.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yeah, and I think that if one of the selling points of the job that you’re offering is that its more life friendly than that’s a selling point and that’s thought through and that’s communicated, but that’s not independent of actually doing the job.

DAN MCGINN: So, you can have it both ways in other words?That you can be a little bit more Millennial friendly, but still have high expectations and demand performance.

JENNIFER DEAL: Yes. You tell them what you want. You tell them what the consequences are if they don’t do it and then you follow through.

ALISON BEARD: Jennifer it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for helping us give advice to our letter writers. We hope that we’ve helped them and we really appreciate you taking the time.

JENNIFER DEAL: It’s been fun talking to you. Thank you for having me.

DAN MCGINN: that’s Jennifer Deal. She’s a researcher at the Center for Creative Leadership. She also co-wrote the book, What Millennials Want from Work. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions.

ALISON BEARD: On our next episode we’re going to be talking about pay injustices. So, if you want us to answer your question on that topic, or any other, just send us an email. We’re at dearhbr@hbr.org.

DAN MCGINN: To get that episode automatically, go to your favorite podcast app or wherever you’re listening to this right now and hit subscribe.

ALISON BEARD: And if you like the show, please give us a five-star review.